Four Corners Regional Care Center

On top of receiving a strong overall score, this nursing home also received top notch health inspections in recent years. We awarded them one of our better scores in that category, with a grade of A-. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining our inspection grades. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these end up being quite insignificant. Although this place had some deficiencies on its report, none of them were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

An additional quality feature for this facility is that it was awarded an above average long-term care grade. In fact, this proved to be its second best category grade. In that category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B+. For long-term care residents, the facility's primary objective is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 82.31293 percent of its patients, which is a few points lower than we expected. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning to our third category, this facility also earned a grade of B for its short-term care rating. This is an above average grade in this area. In forming these short-term care scores, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to create a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the number of residents that ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

The final area we rated was nursing. In that area, we awarded this nursing home an impressive grade of B. The nursing score analyzes many data points, but the main one is the quantity of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.